Thursday, March 29, 2012

poem from brigade member Virginia Barrett

FLORA AND FAUNA 
Occupy California
Virginia Barrett

Point Reyes National Seashore


The field mustard
is occupying the land
of the historic ranch
with a brilliant banner
of yellow—urging an early
American Spring.

Crows, in their black,
Zen monk robes, stand
atop the fence posts
and impart:
            “let flowers grow
            in all our hearts.”

Having survived
an earlier eviction,
the Tule Elk graze
on the hillsides
            of loving undulations
above the rousing surf.

Cows, black and white,
conscientiously chew the cud
of the indigestible news
while in Tomales Bay
the oysters form pearls
to pay for better schools.

Mountain lions organize
in the night, stealing
it back from the monopoly
of electric lights,
           
                        (and the stars are staging a sit-in).

                                    Coyotes circle
                        to devour
            the corporate carnage
in the misty rain
that is washing
this earthly paradise,
                                    this California,
                                                clean.











Brigade poets in new Occupy anthology

Occupy SF—poems from the movement, has just been released. Several members of the brigade are in the anthology including: Sarah Menefee, Jack Hirschman, Agneta Falk, Rosemary Manno, Richard Gross, Gary Hicks, Virginia Barrett, Bobby Coleman, Steven Gray, Sarah Page, devorah major, jimmy.mankind, Mahnaz Badihian, Nina Serrano, Adrian Arias, Jim Byron, Angelina Llongueras, Jessica Loos, and George Long. Over 70 poets and authors are included in this important publication. Visit the website to learn more:www.occupyanthology.com

Monday, March 12, 2012

New Poem "MERREK" by Sarah Page

Merrek
(A Poem for the Children)
1.
Children are profound treasures.
I will never forget how
when you were three years old
and we were playing with your Lite Bright
while the other adults were watching the Superbowl
you took out 2 christmas lights and
plugged one into the board
and put another next to it
and said to me
"This is you,
and this is me,
next to you."
I didn't think children
could express abstractions like that.
Perhaps this is what happens
when the world turns upside-down like it is -
the children become the wise ones
philosopher-sage artists after only three years.
2.
Perhaps I cannot stop adults from burdening
children with their problems and short-comings.
Maybe I cannot stop bombs
from being dropped where they sleep and go to school,
can't keep them from being blown up by land mines
in the fields where they used to play.
But, I can know that when these things happen
we are all closer to them than we think. 
These are OUR children getting hurt and blown up and killed,
OUR bombs and OUR soldiers fighting meaningless wars.
And I can protest,
and I can write this poem,
and I can write more poems like this one -
but I would have to be like a ghost of myself
to do nothing.

Monday, March 5, 2012

The Gates of Hell by Steven Gray

THE GATES OF HELL


               (a sculpture by Rodin at Stanford University)




Standing at the Gates of Hell,
it feels like a rehearsal,
it’s a heavy metal representation,
a reversal


of the elevating. Here
the human beings fall
away from the divine, the
theology appalling,


but consider the location:
maybe it’s about
the suffering students who are damned
if they are dropping out.


The man-hours that went into this
metallic metaphor,
the figures are gesticulating,
there is room for more.


They’re going from the pan into
the fire, I’m resisting
the behavioral engineering,
hell does not exist.


The horrifying does, and it is
seeing through your clothes,
are these the people who have learned
their homes have been foreclosed?


The concept and the execution
were a tour de force,
evoking every kind of pain
from gravity to divorce.


The sculptor was an opportunist
jumping at the chance
to show the human figure from
all angles at a glance,


and that requires chaos, there are
people upside down.
I thought about the burning towers
in another town.


We’re haunted by a fall from grace,
historically a mass grave
is an awful classroom, you are
learning to behave,


but it’s a sunny afternoon,
if it’s the Gates of Hell
the vertigo would have us by
the hair.  I lived to tell


about it, but I have to admit
a subway is more hellish
with a cold wind underground,
the echo of a death-wish.